Sutton, Henry, 1935-2025

David Rytman Slavitt (March 23, 1935 – May 17, 2025) was an American writer, poet and translator, who was author of more than 100 books. Slavitt wrote a number of novels and numerous translations of classical literature from Greek, Latin, and other languages. He also wrote a number of popular erotic novels under the pseudonym Henry Sutton, starting in the late 1960s. The Exhibitionist (1967) was a bestseller and sold over four million copies. He has also published popular novels under the names of David Benjamin, Lynn Meyer, and Henry Lazarus. His first work, a book of poems titled Suits for the Dead, was published in 1961. He worked as a writer and film critic for Newsweek from 1958 to 1965. In 2011, he joined the "100 Club": writers who have published, or contracted for, 100 books. According to Henry S. Taylor, winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, "David Slavitt is among the most accomplished living practitioners" of writing, "in both prose and verse; his poems give us a pleasurable, beautiful way of meditating on a bad time. We can't ask much more of literature, and usually we get far less." Novelist and poet James Dickey wrote, "Slavitt has such an easy, tolerant, believable relationship with the ancient world and its authors that making the change-over from that world to ours is less a leap than an enjoyable stroll. The reader feels a continual sense of gratitude." The New York Times called him "a protean performer who functions at several levels."